Food waste reduction opportunities in the food manufacturing sector

With Plenty Food Group the Centre for Design and Society developed a tool to measure and reduce the waste generated by local food producers.

Project dates:

2014

Grants and funding:

Sustainability Victoria.

Centre for Design and Society has teamed up with Plenty Food Group (PFG), a food manufacturing industry network for companies (retail, food service and hospitality industries) based in Melbourne's north, to develop a tool to measure and reduce the waste generated by local food producers. The project focused primarily on food waste which has significant amounts of energy, water and carbon embodied within the production part of the supply chain, though other waste streams including packaging and general waste were also be documented. The project included waste audit data collection to quantify the amount and causality of waste produced by a sample of PFGmembers, tool and strategy development with PFG members, implementation assistance for waste reduction strategies, reviews of the progress of the PFG member's capacity to reduce food waste, and dissemination of results.